No, Avowed has no romance options, but the game director has some good reasons behind the decision.

Romance options are quite popular in role-playing games these days, and although Avowed doesn’t have any, its director believes it’s better off without one.

For reasons that will probably be pretty obvious, video game players love digitally kissing other video game characters, and romance options are quite popular in many role-playing games, no doubt due to the influence of games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. . It’s been a big part of why Baldur’s Gate 3 is so popular, people just can’t keep their hands off characters like Astarion. But one of next year’s biggest RPGs, Avowed, will have no romance options, despite it being a fairly common thing to find in the genre these days. In a recent interview with GamesRadar, director Carrie Patel explained why Obsidian Entertainment’s latest won’t have any with a simple explanation: “It’s a lot of work.”

Granted, Patel actually had more to say on the subject, as he goes on to say, “You want to make sure you do it right. And part of that is that you also want to make sure that a player who chooses not to romance but still wants to have a romance.” A very deep relationship with those companions can have such a complete and meaningful experience on a path of friendship or allyship as [if] They followed a romantic path. And so we felt like we could better tell the stories of our teammates and our players’ relationships with them without the option of romance.”

Something that was important to the development team was making sure that each companion felt developed and that all players experienced them on the same terms, an important point in the game‘s overall story. “We wanted the four companions to have key roles in the story, different roles in the group, different personalities, and ways that complemented each other and allowed them to tell the story of the Living Lands to the player,” Patel said.

There’s even a companion who’s actually in a relationship, apparently a key component in said character’s development. “[It] It’s not a story I think you’ll see often in many games with a party member traveling with you, so one thing players will really be able to explore here is how she navigates having her heart in you. place, knowing that she really needs to be here.

Personally, I’m not too worried about the idea of ​​not being able to make anyone fall in love with me; Often the writing isn’t even strong enough to support it, so I prefer to see companions and NPCs have their own stories and relationships.

Avowed was originally scheduled to launch this year, but in August Xbox announced that it had been delayed to February 18, 2025; When it comes out, you will be able to play it on Xbox Series X/S and PC.